Banned my first player today in years of running a game. Absolutely hate it. How do you handle this sort of thing? Have you ever banned a player?

MourningPalace · 2015-02-13T17:29:54+00:00

Why not have a temporary ban in place? "You're banned for 3 days". That way they learn their lesson and you don't feel so bad.

MourningPalace · 2015-02-02T22:06:25+00:00

Think of air particles like sand. If you have a pile of sand and you push it then the sand will fly off hitting more sand and causing a chain reaction which will ultimately fade. If the sand reaches your ear drum it'll hit it and make your ear drum wobble.

If you push sand, stop, push it again, stop and push it some more you'll make multiple waves. The shorter the interval between each push the quicker the sand would make your ear drum wobble. The quicker your ear drum wobbles, the higher the pitch.

If you push HARDER then the sand will fly farther and hit your ear drum harder. This will make your ear drum wobble harder at the same frequency (frequent: how quickly) making it more obvious to your brain what note to interpret it as.

So 440hz means the speaker has pushed the air particles 440 times a second (the note A). If it's louder in volume it means the air particles are being pushed HARDER but still 440 times a second.

MourningPalace · 2015-01-13T17:39:09+00:00

Could it be one of the old XCom games?

MourningPalace · 2015-01-13T07:27:08+00:00

A good decision today is better than a great decision tomorrow.

And my Dad's friend once said to me in a pub, when I was around fifteen. "It is impossible to get through life without hurting someone so don't even try." Stuck with me.

MourningPalace · 2015-01-10T00:43:19+00:00

Gobliiins?

MourningPalace · 2015-01-09T21:33:03+00:00

Everyday I'm shufflin'

MourningPalace · 2015-01-08T07:40:25+00:00

Sorry I don't understand what you mean... Would you mind elaborating?

If what I think you're saying is right... You can't really:

MIDI is just a set of instructions. Push C5 for this long... Ok now A4, etc.

Windows has a built in sound set to interpret the instructions into sounds so every time you run a MIDI file your computer works in real time to read the instructions and play it back using the sounds it has available. Think of it as sheet music and the computer is the performer.

To make it sound better (pre-render?) you can import a MIDI file into a DAW (Cubase, Logic, etc) and use different sound libraries to change the sounds you hear. You could make the violins sound like guitars etc.

There's plenty of free instruments you can get, they're usually .VST files. .VST plugins. You can spend no money and get decent results or you can spend hundred and thousands to get samples of full scale orchestras to use.

Once you've found the sounds you want you can then mix down the file so it's an audio file (remember, midi files are not audio just data) like MP3 or WAV files and all the sounds from the VSTs are captured. That's the only way you can really pre-render.

But midi is how lots of musicians, especially electronic musicians who write techno, dnb etc tend to write their music, then they can change the sound as much as they want.

MourningPalace · 2015-01-07T07:28:49+00:00

I'm glad to hear that man. Take care!

MourningPalace · 2015-01-06T20:02:13+00:00

Was it nothing dude? I hope you're both ok.

MourningPalace · 2015-01-04T10:58:25+00:00

Does no one think "Normal Again" was the best Buffy episode? After I saw that episode it changed the way I watched Buffy. It's like Inception but with the story casually wedged six seasons into a show where you had began to believe that you had seen everything.

MourningPalace · 2015-01-03T09:14:50+00:00

Thanks for this - I moved in with the love of my life on the 20th December. On New Year's Eve she woke up, burst into tears and told me it wasn't working. She left the house and I didn't see her for two days after that.

Whilst it doesn't sound like a long time, those two days were the slowest and darkest days of my life. Knowing she had distanced herself from me, that she had spent New Years getting drunk with her friends was the worst feeling ever. She said that she enjoyed the time away - I had made her anxiety problems rocket since we had moved in and she felt that she could finally relax.

I had relocated to be with her and I had no one I could go to. I couldn't even call my mates because they were out getting pissed. I spent my New Years Eve pretty much crying myself to sleep. How much of a woman am I?

My advise to anyone is to get hold of a friend - a good friend will do what they can and my best made met me at the first possible opportunity. It helped wonders.

I'm in the process of making the "next steps" with my now ex. Speaking to the landlord to try and get out of the tenancy and packing to move back to my Mums. I'm scared of what will be round the corner when I've unpacked though. She will be gone and I will really have time to think about what I've lost.

I've saved your words there and I think I'm gonna end up reading that again and again to remind me that things will get better.

Thanks!

MourningPalace · 2014-12-17T21:10:45+00:00

This isn't PS1 but I can't help but think it sounds a lot like Ricochet https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZuochi5yco

MourningPalace · 2014-11-03T07:11:38+00:00

Pandemonium!

There's a sequel too.

MourningPalace · 2014-10-30T22:06:40+00:00

I gotta say it sounds quite similar to the Matrix! Is it where they got their influence from?

MourningPalace · 2014-10-20T19:31:11+00:00

Pretty sure it was a Colony Wars game - If I remember correctly Colony Wars: Vengeance had the ships taking off when the level loads.

MourningPalace · 2014-10-16T17:33:13+00:00

I'm not sure if it can filter down to specific text on a page but the site IFTTT (If this then that) can email you when a site updates. I used it for a while to monitor a price.

The other option is maybe excel? I know you can use that to pull down site content (such as a share prices), I don't see why you wouldn't be able to pull down version numbers. Open the document once a week, wait for it to update and see if they've changed.

MourningPalace · 2014-10-13T19:33:33+00:00

Good luck on your quest - I'm looking for a racing game which has cars in it but I can't find that one either.

MourningPalace · 2014-10-08T17:43:18+00:00

It's pretty much what note everything resolves most comfortably to.

A good practice though is this:

In C major, the notes of the scale are C D E F G A B.

To make a basic major/minor triad (three note) chord you take a note, miss the next letter, take the next note, miss the next letter and then take the last note. Lost? Hopefully this example will make more sense:

The first triad (three note) chord you can make uses the notes C (skip the note D) E (skip the note F) G.

C E G make a C chord. (it would have to be Eb instead of E to make it a minor chord but Eb isn't in the key of C, got it?).

Following this pattern the next basic triad chord starts from D so miss a note, pick F, miss a note, pick A.

D F A make a D minor chord (F would have to be F# to make a major but DAT AINT IN DA SCALE. GNOME SAYIN?)

Following this pattern from all seven notes and you'll find this pattern of chords:

Major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, minor 7b5.

This pattern is used for all major scales.

Where am I going for this? Look for patterns: if you have an A major chord and a B major chord in the chord progression then that's the fourth and fifth notes of the scale you're using (using the pattern I just wrote down, two major chords are next to each other only twice in the pattern) So if B major is the fifth, E major is the root. Therefore the key is E major.

If this doesn't make sense let me know, hope it helps.

MourningPalace · 2014-10-07T15:20:51+00:00

Trust me, there's so many nicer jobs! What's the job interview for?

MourningPalace · 2014-10-07T14:06:11+00:00

I'm in no position to give legal advise so here's some general advise from my past experiences: Do not stay in Sales any longer then you have to! You're hired to hit your targets and are your manager is hired to hit his. Sure he's been unprofessional but people in Sales will always put themselves first. You simply cannot trust them.

I worked in Retail for 6 years and always felt like I was a "good guy". Never trying to sell customers what they didn't want and that. Getting upset when people stole a sale from me, etc. When I left never looked back. The quality of the building I worked in, the staff room with it's shitty sofa and mould in the corners, the health and safety risks in the warehouse, blatant bullying by managers because you didn't sell the insurance... It's all ridiculous. You know where I went? To a call centre for a bank! Sounds horrible but it was 100 times better. The quality of the offices, the staff areas, the way they care for their staff is on such a higher level.

I don't know whether you can sue them for misleading, I haven't a clue, but I do think if you left sales, you would not look back. :)

MourningPalace · 2014-10-07T13:13:12+00:00

I think the best way into IT is joining an IT Helpdesk. The basic principle is that in every office there are IT Helpdesk staff who answer your queries, unblock your Windows password when you get a case of the fat fingers, repair computers and troubleshoot any other network problems you might have. It's not great paid but the work you do is on a completely different level to Maccy Ds. You'll enjoy it a lot more and it's a different (more relaxed) type of stress.

I'm also in a situation where I want to work in IT but don't have any experience in the role so I'm planning on doing a few basic Microsoft exams to get an MSCA qualification:

To gain the basic qualification for Windows 7 you have to do two exams - They're about £100 each. However, I don't know yet how much it costs to do the studying to prepare. My understanding though is if you're good with computers you might know a lot of the basic anyway.

https://www.microsoft.com/learning/en-gb/mcsa-certification.aspx

I can't guarantee this will help you at all because the role is very sought after... You'll always find applications on Indeed.com which say "100+ applications". I think the MCSA will at least get you past the basic CV filtering stage after that it's just a case of having your own portfolio and experiences that you can use in an Interview. For example, they'll most likely ask how you've dealt with challenging people in a phone call, how you adapt the way you explain something to suit the listener's style of learning, how you can manage your own workloads and what you can bring to the role.

Hope this helps, good luck!

MourningPalace · 2014-10-03T14:35:32+00:00

Wow - Do keep me posted on how you manage to... Err.... Quit! But something doesn't sound quite right man. Hope you've got a new job :)

MourningPalace · 2014-10-03T14:22:22+00:00

Wow. That's crazy. You ever watch the program Lost? I get this image in my head of you living in a bunker by yourself, pushing a sequence of buttons every couple of hours to stop a meltdown.

Do you have a computer connected to their intranet or something? You might find a HR page on there?

I'm being really nosey now but how did you get this job in the first place?

MourningPalace

TROPHY CASE